A new smartphone app could allow you to test your own urine for indications of as many as 25 medical conditions. Called Uchek, the app, unveiled this week at the TED (Technology, Education, Design) conference in Los Angeles, can test for 10 different elements including glucose, proteins and nitrates. The presence and levels of those elements allow the app to detect diseases such as diabetes, urinary tract infections, liver problems and cancer.

The testing process works much like a home pregnancy test or blood glucose monitor. Users dip a standard test strip into their collected urine, then place it on a specialized mat, which is supplied with the app. The mat normalizes the colors on the stick and a person uses their smartphone to take a picture. The app analyzes the photo and identifies which, if any, conditions are indicated by the colors.

The app’s designer, Myshkin Ingawale, hopes that the mobility and relatively low cost of the app ($20) will give people in the developing world easier access to medical diagnostics and treatment. The app will be available for individual use from Apple’s app store as soon as late March, and will be tested on a larger scale at the King Edward Hospital in Mumbai, India.

Sourced from: BBC News, TED 2013: Uchek app tests urine for medical issues

The death of a sibling can have a fatal effect on the remaining brothers and sisters, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.  It found that women had a 25 percent increased risk of a fatal heart attack if they had lost a sibling, and men were 15 percent more likely to die of a heart attack after the death of a sibling.

What’s interesting is that the risk of heart attack did not increase immediately after the sibling’s death. Women’s heart attack risk did not start to elevate until four to six-and-a-half years after their sibling’s death, and men’s risk did not increase until two to six-and-a-half-years after the death.

Researchers said that the findings indicate that people often underestimate the long-term impact of a sibling’s death on the rest of the family. They noted that people often fall into unhealthy habits after the loss of a loved one, such as eating junk food, resuming smoking, stopping exercise and isolating themselves.

Sourced from: Medical News Today, Sibling Death Increases Risk Of Heart Attack

While the impact sustained from heading a soccer ball is much less than a blow to the head from a ramming linebacker, soccer players who frequently head a ball could see a decline in their cognitive abilities, according to a study published in the online journal PLoS ONE.

The study tested the cognitive function of high school girls by asking them first to point away from a target on a screen, then to point to a target on a screen. Pointing away from a target, according to researchers, requires a voluntary cognitive response, while pointing to a target is a reflexive response. The girls who played soccer were much slower at the task that required them to point away from a target, indicating damage to their voluntary cognitive responses.

Although the results were not conclusive, researchers hypothesized that the sub-concussive hits to the head sustained during a soccer game could cause the same kind of damage to the frontal lobes as a mild traumatic brain injury.

Sourced from: Medical News Today, Heading A Soccer Ball Could Impact Cognitive Performance